Fender Guitars and Musical Equipment

Fender guitars are produced by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation of Scottsdale, Arizona, a manufacturer of stringed instruments
and amplifiers. Their models include sucy solid-body electric guitars as the Stratocaster and the Telecaster. The company, previously
named the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, was founded in Fullerton, California, by Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender
in 1946. Leo Fender also designed one of the first commercially successful solid-body electric bass, the Precision Bass (P-Bass),
which has become known in rock, jazz, country, funk and other types of music.

Fender manufactures its most expensive guitars at its Corona factory in California and manufactures a variety of cheaper mid to
high quality guitars at its Ensenada factory in Baja California, Mexico. Channing Ward is the lead designer of the 2009 Stratocaster.
Fender also contracts Asian guitar makers to manufacture Fender guitars and to also manufacture the lower priced Squier guitars.
The older and American built Fender guitars are generally the most favoured, but pre-1990 Fender Japan guitars are now highly
regarded as well. Fenders built in Ensenada, Mexico, took over the main export role from the Japanese made Fenders and Japanese Fenders
are now manufactured mainly for the Japanese market, with only a small number marked for export.

The company began as Fender's Radio Service in late 1938 in Fullerton, California, USA. As a qualified electronics technician,
Leo Fender had been asked to repair not only radios, but phonograph players, home audio amplifiers, public address systems and
musical instrument amplifiers. (At the time, most of these were just variations on a few simple vacuum-tube circuits.) All designs
were based on research developed and released to the public domain by Western Electric in the 30's, and used vacuum tubes for
amplification. The business also sidelined in carrying records for sale and the rental of self-designed-and-built PA systems.
Leo became intrigued by design flaws in current musical instrument amplifiers, and he began custom-building a few amplifiers based
on his own designs or modifications to designs.

The core of its instrument line - the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Precision Bass and Jazz Bass - remains largely unchanged from the
1950's and 1960's originals.